Impression, hint, abstraction.

Abstraction is the process of transforming impressions of everyday perceptions of the world into concrete structuring systems which are developed by means of fine art.

Found objects, colour impressions, forms and spaces memorized by moving through streets and places are the initial starting points for Susanne Bürger, and the artistic work develops in several stages. Starting, off with objective drawings, which explore the potential and thereby define the initial form, drawings leading to individual forms which carry within them the initial starting points as an echo are coming into existence at a fast pace. Susanne Bürger trusts the process of direct placement of drawing lines in a rapid succession, which prevent a working-over at a later stage. One shot situation or a new beginning. Fantasy, the unconscious and the ability to make decisions support this process, whose creation is being inscribed into the paper as a living trace of the hands.

With the vitality of the paint and the intensity of the line, the creative passion and playful enjoyment make the immediate transition to the viewer and open his or her capability for perception. On the one hand the forms are clearly recognizable, on the other hand they are applied with a transitional relation to the initial forms in a drawing system, and they transform the imagination into other realms, as if seen from a distant point. Experienced movement, visual movement, imagined movement 

 

 

Artists books

In her books, Susanne Bürger is working, with the sensual language of materials such as watercolours, pencil and ink on paper. The fluidity of the thinned paint soaking into the receptive paper, its seeping through on the front and the back of the page, the blooming of the paint at the edges of the lines remain visible. In the combination of coloured lines and simple ornaments a room comes into being, existing of space and thoughts. Hovering forms create open pictorial spaces, whereas single sections stand freely on the paper.

The artist thus develops a correspondence between colours and drawing, spontaneity and reflexion, emotion and thinking into a sequence of rhythmic momentary takes culminating into several series, which are connected with each other by a book. In the flow of succession of the single pages the motives change surprisingly into other directions for the viewer, the shapes change into visual imaginations.

The actual movement of the turning of the pages by hand applies to the sense of reading, but the succession of pictures changes the impression to a viewing experience where stronger and weaker parts stay next to each other on an equal level and with this take on a playful lightness, which raise associations to the medium of movies.

However, the artistic work of Susanne Bürger reflects the increased value of the haptic quality of an original, which compared to digital picture productions takes on the opposite position.  

 

Drawing pads

Several drawings created one after the other and put together as a pad, activate each other by their differing structures and haptic drawing traces on the paper. Whether the viewer connects the second page with the third, or the second page with the fifteenth page, differences and associations are created so that ach time a different perception is activated. Perception is not held in a centre, rather the drawings strengthen the motion of seeing through their clear language of light and dark contrast.

 

Circular works

Corresponding to the fast workpace of drawing as a direct transfer of movement to paper is the slower process in the development of the paintings done with oil paints on wood.

Again the artist is searching for the visible things, but changes her stance in relation to the material. By reduction and withdrawing of own traces the perceived changes into simple

A circular form is put together by two half circular shapes with a horizontal line, and the halves are treated differently with a painting and drawing approach. Monochrome colour areas on the one half, and the highlighting of the linear structure of the wooden grain on the other half create a tension of unity and separation when placed together. The circles differ in size, colour, light and dark contrast and drawing structure. From the impression of the signs on the treetrunks and the wooden logpiles of felled trees, an allusion to the spray paints used to mark wood in forest industry, Susanne Bürger uses the neon colour orange in a few of the half circular shapes. 

In this group of works several half circular forms develop at the same time next to each other, so that the artist uses her playfully light concept for changing possibilities of combinations.

A number of circles are distributed as an installation in different sizes on the wall. A spatial situation of abstraction in an orderly system is hereby developed, with the sensation of an imagined movement reminding one of planet,models, or a planetarium, supported by the separation of the circles into two zones of lightness, stored by the viewer as the day/night sequence of lunar systems in his visual memory.

 

Martin Conrad, November 2010